• Nine styrylbenzothiazoles: structure, luminescence and DFT • First crystallographic elucidation of five compounds • Isostructurality only in two compounds • Three compounds with high PLQY in blue, yellow and green • Electron-donating and polarizability of substituents drive high PLQY Here, 2-styryl-1,3-benzothiazole and seven para-substituted phenyl derivatives thereof were synthesized, structurally elucidated and assessed to photoluminescence, with theoretical approaches of their absorption spectra. One derivative substituted at ortho-position of phenyl adds to series of nine studied compounds, in which five of them had their crystal structures determined for the first time. These structures join to two others already known thus far, allowing us to get solid state structural knowledge from the compounds series such as molecular planarity and packing diversity given by different patterns of π…π stacking, CH…π and CH…N interactions even though their molecular simplicity and similarity. Isostructurality was observed only between the unsubstituted and the fluoro substituted compounds. Compounds with methoxy, N,N -dimethyl and thiomethoxy para-substituents presented high photoluminescence quantum yields above 10%, with emission in the blue, yellow and green colour regions, respectively.
Pereira et al. (Sun,) studied this question.